Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Earlier this month, I spent the day out at High
Plain Raceway (HPR) driving solo as Margo had commitments she simply couldn’t
ignore. Being a new grandparent, opportunities to spend time with the granddaughter
are not invitations easily turned down, so I would be spending the day,
trackside, and alone. The picture above best describes the conditions but also
my mood. As much as I really looked forward to spending time on the track, it’s
a lot more fun when Margo is around, participating, and sharing in the
adventure.

And an adventure it remains – every time either of us gets behind the wheel,
pulls the straps of our safety harness tight, fires up the engine and heads to
the grid, the adrenalin kicks in and it all gets serious in a hurry, but in an
anticipatory, “wonder what’s going to happen?” manner, as we look to see who
will be joining us on track. Will there be aggressive drivers prepared to steal
our apexes? Or, will we be left alone to circle at our own pace? No matter; for
this day, it will be a team of one and with nothing to share it will become a
time to strengthen the brain’s memory-muscle paths as I drive numerous sessions
with as consistent a lap time as I can muster.

The plan was for three 30-minute sessions in the morning followed by three in
the afternoon for a total of three hours on-track time. This is aggressive and
ambitious, as at organized events we typically drive four 20-minute sessions.
As much as this sounds rather simple, the mental aspects of driving quickly
during these organized events soon drains away the adrenalin we may have
experienced earlier and the 20-minutes is as much as we can mentally handle
under most conditions. Unfortunately, this outing at HPR was to be anything but
routine!

Just getting to HPR that Friday morning was an
adventure; for readers who have been following the storms that hit Boulder
County, they will know just how serious this once-in-a-hundred-year storm
proved to be. It was chaos, all around us as swollen streams and creeks became
raging torrents that swept aside all they encountered. Our former offices
alongside Boulder Creek were ripped in half, and yes, there was loss of life
even here, in Boulder proper. On Thursday morning we had several exits out of
our estate but by Thursday night, only two were left. Hooking up the RV and
trailer and getting the Corvette strapped down, watching over my shoulder the
whole time as rain continued to fall and thunderclaps echoed out of the
mountains, I was left with this feeling of “what the heck am I doing?”

The video above, as short as it is, gives you a hint of what the conditions were
like trackside. It was wet. It was windy. And few other drivers made it to the
track – just two other cars on track for the morning sessions and three other
cars for the afternoon. Fortunately, my client made it for the afternoon
sessions by which time the track had dried out. The winds were brisk but warm
and for the most part, only two small pools of water remained by the time we
went out on track.

This is the second time I have had a client venture out to see firsthand what
being a part of Team Pyalla Technologies “Track Days” is really like. Last
year, it had been Margo’s turn to entertain a client and this would be my first
time. The track was in wonderful condition with the rains and then the winds
having completely cleaned the surface of the track so there was little to
concern us and after the three outings, we called it a day. We were safe and we
did get to see the difference between a Corvette and a couple of

Porsches,
although the Carrera 4S was in the hands of someone new to the track, but the
older, Carrera 2, provided some fun for a couple of laps that kept me honest
for a brief period as I separated the Vette from what proved to be a
well-driven Porsche.

September is perhaps the best time of year to
explore Colorado. As the month began, we took the SRT Viper out for a couple of
days driving along the byroads of western Colorado. The intent had been to take
in the golden colors as leaves begin to turn with the onset of Fall, but this
year, given the snowfalls that continued well into Spring, the time for Fall
colors is still a fair way off and it will be mid to late October before any
meaningful displays can be observed. Hopefully, we will find the time to check
them out for ourselves.

Before this post appears, Margo will more than likely have added a post of her
own on that trip to the western fringes of Colorado so I will not cover that
excursion. However, the picture above of Margo was taken in Aspen, at the rugby
field, leaning against the goal post, a few blocks from the center of downtown
Aspen. Every year there’s a competition that draws players from all over the
world but the loudest accolades are always reserved for the local team, The
Gentlemen of Aspen. Through the years I have played and followed Rugby, never
before have I ever heard of a rugby team mentioned in the same breath as
gentlemen so at some point, Margo and I will make time to watch a game or two
as the competition comes around.

In just a short period, we had driven to Atlanta and back and with the drive to
western Colorado, we added yet another thousand miles to the Viper’s odometer.
However, by no stretch of the imagination were we done with our cross-country
travels. If the year had begun with multiple trips to the West Coast in our
trusty Escalade, then the closing months of 2013 will be best remembered for
our trips east. As much as we really enjoy track days, and our time out west,
each time we head east it’s a whole new adventure as we find new roads to explore.
No sooner had we returned from checking out whether the colors of Fall were on
display then it was time to prepare for the drive to Ontario, Canada.

A client had asked me to present to the Fall meeting
of the Canadian users of HP NonStop systems. It had been several years since I
had last travelled to Mississauga, Ontario, and so there was no way I would
pass on the opportunity and to make the experience even more enjoyable, we
would take our Grand Tourer (GT) out for the drive. The garage continues to see
its fair share of cars pass through its doors but the GT, well, it’s something
else and whereas all our other cars are slightly track-oriented, the GT shifts
the focus a little more towards comfort. We just had to see how it performed on
what would become a 4,000 mile adventure.

The route across was straight forward – get to Mississauga as quickly as
possible. Departure was originally planned for the Sunday following my track
outing to HPR but the experience of getting the RV and trailer off the ridge
where we live made us pull forward our plans. And a good thing, too, as more
rain was forecast for Saturday night. Checking out the street closures noon
time Saturday, we found we were down to just one route out of town so we headed
back home, threw together the belongings we would need, and headed for Kansas
immediately.

The route back home? Well that was another story. Being as far east as we would
be, we just had to drive past Niagara Falls and the road would then take us
down through New York and Pennsylvania making a visit to Wellsboro, PA,
impossible to ignore. The picture above is of us both fronting all the falls –
from left to right, the American Falls with the Bridal Veil next to it and then
further to the right, the Horseshow Falls denoting the Canadian side of
Niagara. All of this was captured by Margo in the video below. Before we headed
to the falls, a colleague had suggested we take a short side excursion to the
city of Niagara on the Lake and this we did – and what a bucolic village setting
this turned out to be. A definite must-see for anyone visiting these parts!

Why Wellsboro, PA? Even the hardiest of travelers
will be hard pressed to find this town on a map – it’s not even the county
seat. However, back in the 1960s the Mergenthaler Corporation maintained a
factory and educational center in support of their new “Line of Film” electronic
printing systems. The replacement for older, lead-slug centered Line of Type
mechanized systems, the transition to film revolutionized the printing industry
and my father became the first Australian user to be educated in the system.
When he returned to Sydney he brought with him a slide deck he then showed to
many audiences (in his formative years in the newspaper industry, he have been
a press photographer) and the images of this town stayed with me to this day.

Even as so much has changed in the years that have passed – almost 50 years
have passed – the town itself had changed little. The hotel he had stayed in
was still there as was the diner and the picture of me below shows me at the
town’s major intersection with that diner in the background. As for the
factory, unfortunately with the passage of North American free trade Agreement
(NAFTA), Mergenthaler moved the whole operation to Mexico (as did Corning we
were told) and the town took a big hit. Before Margo and I drove back to the
main road, I did buy a tee shirt and I will wear it to my next family outing in
Sydney when next I get there.

As for the last stages of our trip, we elected
to skip the freeway and once we had passed Indianapolis, we picked up US
Highway 36 that runs uninterrupted from Indianapolis to Estes Park, Colorado.
For long stretches at a time, all you can see is corn under cultivation but
every so often, the rad dips and winds and takes you to places unexpected – I
didn’t realize that the town of Hannibal, central to the life of Mark Twain,
really existed, but it does. And it has a great gelato shop, too! Looking out
across the dark waters of the Mississippi, the adventures of Tom Sawyer didn’t
seem all that far fetched. Perhaps that was the most surreal experience of the entire
trip.

There will be more days on track, of course, even as there are more miles to be
covered by car. Already there are plans in place to drive to Orlando for
Margo’s big end of year event. On the one hand you can argue about how
educational travel really is, even as you can persuade others of the immersion
of the senses that naturally occur. It’s still just driving down roads you have
no real understanding of where they will take you even as you try to stay
hydrated all the time. Modern smartphone technology means you have a camera
with you at all times, and that too, is a good thing.

Nevertheless, there’s still a great sense of adventure about taking these
journeys and just having the opportunity to do this – a girl from Poland and a
boy from Australia – is reward enough to generate the desire to keep on doing
this for as long as we can. Without delving into clichés this is definitely
becoming a journey without end and for that, Margo and I remain extremely
grateful that we have been given the opportunity to drive and to keep on
driving! There’s still so much more to come …